The start of the journey

I promised my mom and some friends that I'd keep a blog of this trip, so one of my goals is to keep that promise. I'll probably put little to no effort into the appearance of it, so... Sorry I'm not sorry. But without wasting anymore of anyone's time, let's get into the first three days.

Day 1:
We started out by getting the bikes fully loaded with all of our gear. Neither of us had ridden with them with everything on and, let me tell you, it was a shock. The fuckers weigh at least 80lbs a piece! I knew they'd be heavy, but not whole extra person heavy. Anyway, we decided to ride over to the ocean and dip the ol' rear tire in the ocean, as is tradition. When we got there, Jerome (Dad, but henceforth will be called Jerome because it's an awesome first name for a white guy in his 60s) decided to skip it because pushing the heavy bike through sand was near impossible. I decided to try, and made it, but not without doing the equivalent of 200 bike weight curls.

Notice the deep tire tracks leading out to the ocean. My arms are now jello.

After that, we started our ride. Getting through San Diego want too bad. A couple cars yelled at us, asking where we were going, followed by a "kick ass!" type comment. Once we got close to the outskirts, unfortunately Jerome hit a crack in the road and severely bent his front rim. We had to hobble back 10 miles to get to a bike shop. This bike shop didn't have a good replacement wheel, but they have us a donor wheel to make it to the next shop. When we got to the next shop, they hooked us up with a strong wheel, they just needed a little time to put it together for us. Jerome was feeling tired, so we got some tacos and called it a day. Day 1 was a rough start to the trip. We later googled our distance from the shore, and we were sitting at 15 miles. Checked the bike odometer for the day and it said 50 miles. We biked 50 miles to make it 15. Shit.

Day 2:

Today was redemption day. We got the shitty day out of the way early, so it could only get better. We spent the first half of the ride navigating the San Diego backstreets to get back to where we were. Again, cars were fairly respectful for a larger city. Once we got out of the city, the riding got really fun. We found ourselves riding out of a seemingly thick layer of smog into direct sunlight and the landscape really seemed to light up. Lots of climbing and the heat found us wanting to stay in Alpine, CA. We found a really unique motel/restaurant/coffee shop to stay at. I know, it sounds like a cluster fuck, but the layout made it work. Juan was the owner, and he talked to us for a bit. He thought it was really neat that a father/son were doing this ride. Turns out he has three kids that finished med school/dental school/some other prestigious education. Jerome later told me "what the fuck did I do wrong? Two of my kids are unemployed and the other one works for Walmart." Thanks.

Jerome enjoying the motel balcony. Thanks for the spot, Juan.

Day 3:

Now we're caught up to today. We waited to start a little later than usual so that we could grab a breakfast burrito. Talked to the lady about our ride, she thought it was cute, we know it. We start riding after loading everything up and sure as shit, it's fuckin hot out, tell you what. We had to climb basically all day, Jerome wasn't thrilled with that. I think he quickly learned that there's no rush for this type of ride. We had to ride for a 5 mile stretch on the interstate, which was probably the hardest stretch. I was sweating bullets on that stretch, but we got to check out a pretty cool scenic overlook.

Jerome, he's such a poser sometimes.

Once we got off the interstate, there was plenty more climbing to be done. I don't know if I've emphasized enough how much harder it is to climb with all this shit on your bike. But we made it. Along the way I found a conveniently placed oven to bring back home with me to replace my broken one. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough bungee cords to strap it down.

Fuck you, I thought it was funny.

And now he we are, in Pine Valley. I'll keep updating as we go (mostly for you, mom).